About 65 percent of the American public favors tighter rules on hydraulic fracking or fracking in drilling for natural gas.

More than three times aws many Americans say there should be more regulation of fracking than less, according to a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted March 6-11.

The findings coincide with recent surveys in Ohio and New York where people who believe that fracking will cause environmental damage outnumber those who say the process is safe.

"That actually doesn't surprise me," Mark Boling of Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co., told Bloomberg. "We have been sp focused as an industry on figuring how to crack the code and get these huge volumes of gas trapped in shale formations. We haven't focused on the things we have to do differently above ground."